Back in April there was a kerfuffle in the news about a deal penned between AMD, Global Foundries and TSMC. It is not worth repeating completely as you can follow the story by using the previous link, suffice to say that it did not indicate problems with the relationship between AMD and Global Foundries.

"AMD reportedly has completed the tape-out of its next-generation GPU, codenamed Southern Islands, on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) 28nm process with High-k Metal Gate (HKMG) technology, according to a Chinese-language Commercial Times report. The chip is set to expected to enter mass produciton at the end of 2011.

TSMC will also be AMD's major foundry partner for the 28nm Krishna and Wichita accelerated processing units (APUs), with volume production set to begin in the first half of 2012, the report said.

TSMC reportedly contract manufactures the Ontario, Zacate and Desna APUs for AMD as well as the Northern Island family of GPUs. All of these use the foundry's 40nm process technology.

TSMC was quoted as saying in previous reports that it had begun equipment move-in for the phase one facility of a new 12-inch fab (Fab 15) with volume production of 28nm technology products slated for the fourth quarter of 2011. The foundry previously said it would begin moving equipment into the facility in June, with volume production expected to kick off in the first quarter of 2012."

[H]ard|OCP were gifted with a chance to visit Global Foundries Fab 8 facility which is being built in central New York state. [H] took along a video camera to let you see some of the facilities as they stand now. Not only is this impressive because of the size of the Fab, it is also one of the biggest construction jobs, period.

"GLOBALFOUNDRIES was kind enough to let HardOCP into its new Fab 8 facility in Malta, New York. While far from finished, this 28/20nm plant will be ramping to full production in 2012. Check out the video to understand the sheer scale of the largest construction project currently underway in the United States."

Over the weekend conspiracy theorists perked their ears about an announced change in the way AMD will purchase 32nm chips from Global Foundries. What seemed to be odd was the inclusion of the term "paying per good chip", something that is not done in the industry, even with horrible yields such as we saw with TSMC's 40nm process. A call this morning filled in the missing details and SemiAccurate was there to report on it. The long and short of it has nothing to do with yields, as they are still looking good. Instead it seems like a way for AMD to ensure they have good supply of 32nm chips no matter how the actual production lays out and are not stuck paying for unusable chips while at the same time giving Global Foundries a way to get some money out of AMD if yields and sales are high. This is very good news for companies like ATIC and Mubadala which have a stake in both AMD and Global Foundries.

"The AMD (AMD) and Global Foundries Wafer Purchase Agreement (WPA) that was released yesterday made little to no sense. On a conference call today, AMD’s Interim CEO Thomas Seifert filled in the missing pieces, it all makes sense now.

Few things are more beloved by journalists than a 5:30am PST financial conference call, but this one was worth it, especially in light of the questions left hanging by yesterday’s announcement. We stated that on the surface, it sure sounded like AMD was tearing Global Foundries a new reticle for use in debugging their 32nm process. That however contradicted the facts we had heard on the ground, as of late last year, there simply were not 32nm yield problems. So why was the press release written the way it was, and is really going on?"